What an exciting week it has been! Yesterday we made the final corrections to my book Open Roads Open Minds and gave the printer the thumbs-up to get the presses rolling with the print edition. Today the ebook edition is published and available for sale online via DAM Useful Publishing.
This book would not have happened without the unbelievable patience and gentle prodding of my partner, Susan Lambert. When she first saw the presentation, she suggested it would make a great book and, even after seeing it over a hundred more times, she never lost faith that I would someday actually make it happen. Then, one fortuitous evening, my digital mentor and great friend, Peter Krogh, and his equally great wife, Alyson, suggested how perfectly Dominique le Roux takes a creative work in one medium and morphs it into another. Half a world away, on the banks of the Mekong River in Laos, Dominique worked her genius on the presentation and you see the result!
However, before there was the book, there was the presentation. And Open Roads would not have happened, at all, without the guidance and counsel of another great friend and mentor: Dewitt Jones. Then, with a suggestion, an idea, an assignment or a production photograph, there are many who made the presentation better in every way: Hilary Hilscher, Patrick O’Brien, Annie Uzzell, Monique Boucher, Geoff Parker, Elizabeth Miller, Dick Durrance, Walter Calahan, Bruce Dale, Bill Weems, Will Weems, Ralph Daniel, Bernie Papin, Glen McCaskey, Carolyn Lancaster, Doug Barton, Doug Pfeiffer, Julie Dombroski, Nancy Wexler, Karen Bacot, Fred Burnham, Jim Sugar, George Sass, Dee Elliott, Carl Voss, Pete Stephano, Steve Sell, Steve Arneson, Lucinda Detrich, Mike Jones, Terri O’Hare, Julie Beauvais, Julie Barker, Terri Laakso, Beth Gaddy, Leonard Long, Alan Cox, Lisa Probst, Aimee Rupe, Irene Owsley and Elliot Stern.
Without Bill Garrett and Bob Gilka, however, neither the presentation nor the book would have happened. Bill Garrett, Editor of National Geographic from 1980 to 1990, picked me out of journalism school in 1969 at the University of Missouri and made me the first intern the magazine ever had on the executive floor. Bob Gilka, longtime Director of Photography at National Geographic, gave me my first assignment in December of 1972.
It is only with great gratitude to all above that I can say, “The rest is history.”